Trumpeter Adam O'Farrill's new band Elephant brings directness to Vancouver October 23
The Brooklyn-based composer's four-piece ensemble makes its Vancouver debut at Alliance Française as part of VanJazz '26, trading intellectual interrogation for honest emotional expression.
The day's top stories, food & events — every morning at 7. Unsubscribe anytime.
Trumpeter and composer Adam O'Farrill has spent a decade carving an idiosyncratic voice on his horn — one indebted to Louis Armstrong, Kenny Dorham, Wadada Leo Smith, and Ambrose Akinmusire, yet open to electronics, abstraction, and flashes of sweetness. With his new band Elephant, he's channelling that language into something more direct: less interrogation of possibility, more honest emotional expression.
O'Farrill, 32, first broke into jazz in 2016 with Stranger Days, a debut band built around two horns, bass, and drums — an instrumentation that forced him to map piano-based compositional ideas onto sparse instrumentation. Five recordings followed over the next decade. With Elephant, a four-piece ensemble, he's returned to piano as a compositional anchor, and to Yvonne Rogers, an especially strong pianist, to bring those keyboard ideas to life on stage alongside his horn variations.
"I've always written on the piano," O'Farrill explained in a recent interview from his Brooklyn home. "It's always been where I can most clearly hear my ideas and feel my ideas and shape my ideas. With the first Elephant album, I gave myself the challenge of just letting it flow a little bit. With other albums, I really, really kind of intellectualized a lot and predetermined a lot. Which is not a qualitative comment or assessment; it's just different."
Elephant makes its Vancouver debut at Alliance Française Vancouver on October 23 as part of the new VanJazz '26 festival. The band represents O'Farrill's evolution from the conceptual rigor of past projects — like For These Streets, where he orchestrated piano material for a larger ensemble — toward a more transparent compositional practice where the piano sits front and centre, unmediated by dense instrumentation.
"I wanted to give myself the challenge of taking the piano and trying to make that interesting itself," O'Farrill said. "Like, really lean into my background and my inherent proclivity as a composer."
The details
When and where is Adam O'Farrill's Elephant performing in Vancouver?
Elephant performs at Alliance Française Vancouver on October 23, 2026, as part of the VanJazz '26 festival.
What instruments make up the Elephant ensemble?
Elephant is a four-piece ensemble featuring Adam O'Farrill on trumpet, Yvonne Rogers on piano, and two other musicians.
How does Elephant differ from O'Farrill's earlier band Stranger Days?
Stranger Days was built around two horns, bass, and drums, while Elephant features piano as a compositional anchor and uses a four-piece lineup that allows O'Farrill to center keyboard-based ideas.
